Current Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says that in order to keep up with technology that the police and security services need new powers and that an expansion of surveillance is necessary.
The proposed database will hold for two years details of all communications, not however the content just data about the communications i.e. who, when and how long.
BBC News: Giant database plan ‘Orwellian’
The Telegraph: Social networking sites to be snooped on by security services
Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, added: “The Government’s Orwellian plans for a vast database of our private communications are deeply worrying. I hope that this consultation is not just a sham exercise to soft-soap an unsuspecting public.”
Guy Herbert, from campaign group NO2ID, said: “The Home Secretary talks about ‘principles’ but the only principle she appears to be acquainted with is convenience for the stalker state.
I too have concerns about this proposal. Presumably the idea is that criminals and terrorists even if they are smart enough not to discuss their illegal activities over telephones or via email will communicate with their associates. The database will allow investigators to map these networks of associates and open up new areas of investigation and discover new suspects.
But the vast majority of Britons are not terrorists or criminals so the database will mostly consist of data that is of no use to the police or the security services but would be to criminals who could use the data to aid in identity theft. Frankly I have no faith in the government’s ability to safeguard this data.
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Star Trek as the A-Team
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Say ‘Hebbo’ to Tarvuism!
Say Hebbo! from Torvakian on Vimeo.
Sod Tarvuism I’m converting to Barvuism.
Or to be more precise the Barvuist sect Temelmenty Barvul. Who could say not to the practice of free sex? And why not spend one’s Sundays blowing loudly through whistles to ward off Tarvu?
Michael Kassner of TechRepublic reports on a new and effective DoS attack.
Security researchers Jack C. Louis and Robert E. Lee of Outpost 24 stumbled onto a relatively simple way to implement a Denial of Service (DoS) attack that does not require massive SYN floods. The researchers aren’t releasing many details about the attack, except for those provided in a very interesting interview with Brenno de Winter.
Steve Gibson as part of the Security Now series did a podcast about Sockstress and then talked to Jack & Robert off the record about their exploit and the issue of releasing the knowledge of it into the public domain where it may be used maliciously.
The Security Now show notes include further details and links to all the coverage of Sockstress.
Just had a customer at the cinema who wished to buy tickets but had forgotten her membership card with which she could get a discount off the price. So I asked her name so that I could search the members database to find her, she replied “wily, spelt W-i-l-l-e-y.”
I thought interesting as that’s not how I’d pronounce that surname and it put me in mind of the apocryphal quote attributed to cricket commentator Brian Johnston in regards to the West Indian bowler Michael Holding.
“The bowler’s Holding, the batsman’s Willey.”
And through his Wikipedia entry I find the following YouTube video of what is regarded as the best bowled over of Test cricket ever.
Mediocre thriller that is not half as intelligent as it thinks and the twist is obvious from the very start. The performances of both Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro are good and are better than most of their work from the past decade but even they can’t elevate the inferior story.
Mysterious New ‘Dark Flow’ Discovered in Space. “As if the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy weren’t vexing enough, another baffling cosmic puzzle has been discovered. Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can’t be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon ‘dark flow.’ The stuff that’s pulling this matter must be outside the observable universe, researchers conclude.” [via]